


Backyard Swings

by tatooedlaura



Series: Backyard Swings [1]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Ficlet, The X-Files Revival, X-Files OctoberFicFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: A tough time after the funeral ...





	

Mulder drifted gently back and forth on the old swingset in Maggie’s backyard. Surprised he hadn’t broken the chains the moment he sat down, he didn’t want to push it by moving too much but given he was human and it was a swing, he gave in to the primal urge and swayed slightly, pretending the turning of the world gave him the motion and not his scuffed black boots in the green grass.

She didn’t want him along when she dropped Bill off at the airport, which he understood completely but which still stung a little, given he’d proven himself able to stay in the same room, car, kitchen as her brother without killing him but she’d requested in a small voice and he’d agreed with a small nod and she’d given him a small smile that didn’t even attempt to reach anywhere beyond her chapped lips, let alone up to her eyes.

So he’d settled himself on the couch to wait for her return.

But then, the silence of the house, the heavy, stifling weight of 80 mourners from the previous day and the fact that Maggie Scully’s current book was still sitting forgotten on the bottom shelf of the end table, pages down, spine cracked up the middle, a well-loved book if ever he saw one, got to be too much for him.

She wouldn’t love that book ever again.

He fled out the backdoor, aiming in the general direction of away, attempting to leave the 1.7 million memories crowded into the eight rooms of what Mulder had always considered his first real, family home since the day Samantha had disappeared all those decades ago. Maggie had understood that better than anyone, inviting him to dinner, family events, Thursday evenings for cards with her ‘girls’, including him before there was a Dana’n’Fox, while there was a Dana’n’Fox and even after there was just a Dana and just a Fox.

She’d made him call her on Fridays, regardless of if he’d just talked to her on Thursday or been over on Tuesday to fix the gutter or change the water in the cooler. She had been so angry with him when he went away that she had screamed at him for 15 minutes the day he’d been declared safe for public consumption again, the day Scully had called to tell her mother they had stopped running. She had cried for two minutes, told her daughter she’d better come to dinner as soon as humanly possible, then asked to speak to Mulder.

Mulder shed silent tears during his beratement, which Scully could hear clearly through the phone, held several inches from his ear. Once Maggie had run out of steam, she quietly told Mulder that he needed to bring flowers for her and for the ‘girls’ whom he had also abandoned in the interim.

He gladly showed up the next Sunday with several dozen roses and while Scully watched them in amusement, they left to walk the neighborhood, distributing the gifts, six flowers at a time, Maggie’s hand lightly through Mulder’s crooked elbow the whole time.

Losing his sister had been life-changing, terrible, confusing; losing his father had been difficult but manageable, painful but not universe stopping; losing his mother had been horrible but again, he’d managed, badly at times but gotten through it.

Maggie, though.

The closest he could come to the profound sense of loss and terror at going on in the world without her happened when Scully had disappeared, been taken, been stolen from him. He’d drifted so far in that time, with only Maggie as his anchor, his bond, his tether to the real world and to the hope of Scully’s return.

Maggie.

She would never say his name again. She would never sit beside Scully and share the same laugh, the same smile, the same twinkling blue eyes at one of his bad jokes. He would never again know what it felt like to have someone love him like only a mother could. He’d lost his mother and he had no idea what to do.

If it hadn’t been for the swing hugging his thighs, he’d have fallen to the ground, the pain of missing her so overwhelming in that moment that his bones didn’t know how to deal, his ability to stay upright in the world abandoning him, gravity attempting to pull him to Earth, suffocate him in the very lawn he should have mowed during his visit the previous Saturday.

The hand running through his hair made him open his eyes, looking up quickly from the view of her equally scuffed boots to find her face, tears rolling quietly, dripping from her chin to land in the dirt below, “I talked to Bill about it and I think I’d like to keep the house. Move in. Make it our own.”

Maggie presented him this final gift, worth more than all the roses, dinners, gutters and hugs in the world, nearly worthy of her daughter herself, “our own?”

Moving between his knees, she dropped her forehead against his, settled in their 23 year-old relished contact, “I would like to keep the gray house but I would love to live here.”

“I won’t let you down again.”

“Mulder …”

Rubbing noses with her, he moved his hands from the chains, settling them on her hips, “I was talking to your mom.”


End file.
